Efforts to restore habitat and manage fisheries often have specific outcomes or objectives related to the occurrence, abundance, biomass, or ecology of target species. But, what constitutes a realistic, achievable goal under current environmental conditions, given the dramatic changes to the Great Lakes in recent decades? To highlight attainable biological goals rather than historical baselines, we used an approach that couples contemporary (1990 - present) fish data and spatially referenced habitat to generate predictions of relative habitat suitability for several native fish species. The resulting spatial benchmarks (locations with high habitat suitability) have utility for planning restoration and management actions and evaluating outcomes. To showcase this work, we use the Great Lakes Aquatic Habitat Framework (GLAHF) Explorer and several tools therein for this workshop. GLAHF is a spatially-consistent framework and database developed by regional collaborators to facilitate basin-wide work on the Great Lakes. The GLAHF Explorer is a publicly available web GIS viewer that allows users to explore habitat maps and other spatial outputs such as modeled habitat suitability and ecosystem types.
